Meeting the School Turnaround Challenge

In recent months, the federal government has made it perfectly clear that one of its key education reform goals is to turn around the nation’s chronically under-performing schools. In fact, President Obama pledged to devote billions of dollars to fund a federal school turnaround program which would close 5,000 of the lowest performing schools in the next five years and reopen them with new principals and teachers.

But as many school districts are finding out, putting the nation’s worst schools on the chopping block is proving to be an arduous and painful process, and the desired results aren’t always achieved.

Take Chicago, for instance. U.S. Secretary of Education (and former CEO of Chicago Public Schools) Arne Duncan oversaw the controversial closing of about 60 schools, only12 of which were reopened with new staff. In his speech at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools conference, Duncan cites preliminary gains made in five of these newly transformed schools.

However, the University of Chicago’s Consortium on Chicago School Research came out with a study showing that most children who transferred out of the newly closed schools ended up enrolling in others that were academically just as weak! Further, since school closings were typically announced six months prior to the end of the academic year, the announcement itself disrupted learning. Students typically showed losses on math and reading tests taken at the end of the year, and were less likely to enroll in summer school. Translation: A majority of the children whose academic chances should have been improved by the closing of their failing schools actually ended up faring no better than they would have had their schools remained open.

On the other hand, the L.A. Times just ran a story about a remarkable turnaround at Pasadena’s John Muir High School where student participation, test scores, and attendance rates improved since the school began an academic remodel in the spring of 2008. All teachers, counselors and administrative staff were forced to reapply for their jobs, and only half were rehired. The school was divided into four personalized academies, and by all accounts, the entire culture of the school changed for the better. (I previously wrote about a similarly successful high-profile school turnaround at Alain Leroy Locke High School which was taken over by Green Dot Public Schools in 2008.)

In Colorado, the Denver Public Schools district is in the process of deciding whether to use severe turnaround strategies on six of its failing schools. (Recommendations will be made on Nov. 9 and the final board vote will be on Nov. 30.) The decision process has been far from smooth, with understandably anxious parents asking for more time, and school-board candidates weighing in—especially on the hot-button issue of whether charter schools should be permitted to take over failing district schools.

I was particularly struck by some of the comments  made about Denver’s Lake Middle School, which may be taken over by a charter school. Christopher Scott, a candidate for a seat on the school board, said the following:

Too much emphasis is being placed on charter-school creation, while existing traditional schools are left to wither.

And Arturo Jimenez, a school-board member, added:

Replacing (Lake) with a charter school is not an option…There has to be some form of neighborhood school available.

This isn’t the first time that I’ve heard people resist the idea of traditional schools being taken over by charter schools, and I still don’t understand why. First of all, the idea that charter schools leave traditional schools behind “to wither” is not necessarily true, as suggested by Marcus Winters’ recent study (discussed in this Wall Street Journal article) which found that students benefit academically when their public school is exposed to competition from charter schools.

Further, people tend to lump all charter schools into one category, and all traditional public schools into another, and then choose a favorite category for political reasons without any regard to vast differences in quality that exist within each category. (They also seem to ignore the fact that charter schools are also public schools using the same public dollars to educate children.)

Scott and Jimenez's argument might make more sense to me if they added that traditional public schools should be protected at all costs because by definition they provide a better quality of education to students than charter schools.  But of course that is simply false. In fact, neither candidate mentions the importance of doing what’s in the best interest of children.  To me, the most compelling statement in the article comes from a parent, John Garcia, whose daughter attends Lake Middle School:

If we are at the bottom of the barrel, we need to change it and focus on how to get better.

And that’s the bottom line. Time is ticking for students trapped in failing schools, and setting politics aside, how to get each of those kids into schools that promote powerful learning environments with highly effective teachers should be the guiding principle behind every school turnaround discussion.

As I mentioned earlier, simply shutting down an under-performing school can do more harm than good unless arrangements are made for each student to be transferred to a better one. And as long as a solid plan and proper leadership is in place, reopening a failing school with new teachers and administrative staff (as a charter school or otherwise) can be the best chance for students to get the kind of education they deserve.

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